The late, great Richard Hoggart

Sunday 13 April 2014 16.00 EDT
First published on Sunday 13 April 2014 16.00 EDT

Your obituary of Richard Hoggart (10 April) remarked on his decision to become warden of Goldsmiths College that "As a close to a career, it was a diminuendo". This is to misunderstand both the man and the place. Some people make a point of moving to the most prestigious institution that makes them an offer in the expectation its grandeur will rub off on them. Others improve and expand the place they are in to make it match their ambitions. This was more like Richard Hoggart's role when I knew him as warden of Goldsmiths in the 1970s and 80s. He expanded the institution out of recognition with the application of his restless energy, intellectual rigour, exceptional contacts and many hours in committee work which is essential but all too often under-appreciated in public life.

I have had no further connection with Goldsmiths except that I spoke at a conference there last week, and I thought of Richard Hoggart: if you seek his monument, look around. Goldsmiths is now a world-class institution that has nurtured the talents of students such as Damien Hirst and Steve McQueen. It can feel proud of itself, and its former warden.Jad AdamsLondon

• Congratulations on the late John Ezard's obituary of Richard Hoggart. Though far from a scholarship boy and privately educated, my life was changed by The Uses of Literacy in 1959. Who can forget some of its chapter mottoes, from Wordsworth, de Tocqueville, Arnold and "Schnozzle" Durante, and the chapter titles Unbending the Springs of Action and Invitations to a Candy-Floss World? For all his achievement and worth, I don't think Perry Anderson quite fits in the pantheon the obituary suggests.Nicholas JacobsLondon

• As a new member of the Arts Council in 1978, I attended its annual budget meeting for the first time in 1979. Discussion was held about the amount of grants the council would give to the major national concert orchestras. In the course of the debate I asked if any grants had been given or would be offered to the numerous brass bands in the UK as they were not mentioned in the budget documents.

One member, in a very haughty voice, said, rather like Lady Bracknell's "A handbag?" comment in The Importance of being Ernest, "we are only concerned with the high arts on this council, Mr Buckle". I replied: "Brass bands are the high arts for many working people in coal mines, factories etc." Speaking as a factory member I had remembered many brass band concerts we enjoyed during lunchtimes in the Oxford car factory where I worked for 14 years. Richard Hoggart strongly supported me and after the meeting congratulated me on my comments. We became very close friends after that, so I mourn his passing very deeply and salute his memory.David BuckleRadley, Oxfordshire

• I never met Richard Hoggart but his The Uses of Literacy had a profound effect on me. As a student in the late 1950s and early 60s, I felt adrift from family and student life. My parents had not seen the point of going to university and we could not converse about my studies. Yet I did not feel at ease at university. I was nicknamed "Bertie", that is "Burlington Bertie from Bow", because of what others regarded – wrongly – as my cockney accent. Hoggart showed me that my experience was not unusual and was common among a new generation able to enter university. He taught me not to abandon my background yet also to make the most of study.Bob HolmanGlasgow

• Martin Kettle (Report, 11 August) is right to stress the importance and influence of Richard Hoggart's work, both in his written work and in the many posts he held, including vice-chairmanship of the Arts Council, from which he was sacked by Margaret Thatcher in 1982. For Hoggart, humane reading and humane education and humane culture and society should be open to everyone, and he deeply deplored those who saw themselves as privileged, not least the patrician William Rees-Mogg who, as chairman of the Arts Council, took it for granted that his journeys from London to his Somerset home and back should be provided by an Arts Council-funded chauffeur-driven car. Not something Richard Hoggart would ever have contemplated.Bruce Ross-SmithOxford

• In Richard Hoggart's obituary, you recall that he wrote of seeing his widowed mother "standing frozen, while tears start slowly down her cheeks because a sixpence has been lost … you do not easily forget". Reading Polly Toynbee's article (Duncan Smith's treatment of the disabled is monstrous, 11 April), it is apparent that IDS has forgotten the effects of poverty, if he ever knew. It seems very little may have changed since the 1920s.David VergusonHuddersfield

• This article was amended on 14 April 2014. Nicholas Jacobs had originally written "my life was changed by The Uses of Literacy in 1959" in his letter, but an editing error in the earlier published version changed that to 1957, the year that the book was published.